Since owners Adam Sanchez and Ann Zyburra reopened the Milias Restaurant June 21, 2011 – which originally opened its doors 89 years ago in downtown Gilroy – they, as well as some guests and employees have reported seeing ghostly figures, hearing strange sounds and other eerie, unexplainable phenomena.
Voices coming from the fax machine, mysterious taps on the back, a pantry chef getting her ponytail pulled by an invisible presence, chairs moving by themselves, even a figure appearing, plain as day, and then vanishing – Sanchez and Zyburra can tell stories all night.
And at 11 p.m. on Halloween night, they surely will. The pair will be opening their doors and turning off the lights for a candlelit dining experience, offering a fixed menu and a chance to experience some of the restaurant’s allegedly haunted history firsthand.
Zyburra said she believes that a former chef who committed suicide within the Milias’ confines is one of the many spirits haunting the restaurant. The chef, according to Zyburra, also lived upstairs in the building’s attached apartments.
“We’ve been told that there was a chef, years and years ago, who worked here all his life,” Zyburra said. “He started out there as a kid and the owners, for some reason, made him retire. After his ‘farewell, have a happy retirement party,’ he walked upstairs and jumped off the roof. There is definitely a presence in the kitchen. There’s also a presence in the bar.”
The most frightening experience relayed by the pair, however, took place at the top of the stairwell in the attached Milias apartments and was reported by a former bartender.
“He used to live upstairs,” Sanchez begins. “He said one night, at about 1 o’clock, he left work and headed up the staircase to his apartment. He was walking up the stairs and at the top of the staircase, there was this older woman with a deadpan look staring him right in the face with sunken eyes. He said it completely scared him.”
The former bartender even tried closing his eyes and reopening them, but she was still standing there, Sanchez said.
“She was very transparent and you could kind of see through her,” he continued. “Before she started coming closer to him, he left as fast as he could and spent the night somewhere else. The next day, he moved out.”
Speaking generally, neither Sanchez or Zyburra are afraid of the spirits they say lurk within the Milias.
“I wouldn’t say it’s unnerving,” Sanchez said. “It’s just interesting to realize that they’re out there. Before, I didn’t believe but now I believe maybe they’re trapped somewhere and haven’t completely passed over or something. You’re just a shell. When you die, your soul goes somewhere.”
Zyburra, who said she was a skeptic “through and through” until she experienced the paranormal for herself at the restaurant, initially kept her first ghost encounter to herself. And for good reason.
During their first year in business, Zyburra was falling asleep watching television while sitting at the bar just after 1 a.m. while Sanchez was locking up for the night. Zyburra woke up with someone she didn’t recognize standing next to her.
“He looked right at me and then faded away into nothing,” Zyburra recalls, noting that the apparition looked to be about 25, was wearing clothes straight out of the 1920s or 1930s, was fairly short and had sandy brown hair. “That was one of the first things that happened. I thought I’d never say anything to anyone. I thought I was dreaming, but I wasn’t dreaming then.”
Zyburra isn’t the only one who has reported seeing the young specter. Apparently, the phantom visitor likes to lend a hand every now and then.
Two guests have reported being served their salads by the same ghoulish figure, according to Sanchez – guests who have been regulars at the Milias for years and were remarking one night about the “new food runner.”
“We don’t have a new food runner. We have two girls back there – that’s it,” Sanchez remembers telling the diners, who gave the exact same description of the ghost as Zyburra.
Knowing that other people had experienced an encounter prompted Zyburra to share her first ghost story with the two guests served salads by the silky apparition.
Sanchez says so-called ghost hunters have investigated the Milias before, but they’ve had no success in finding anything out about what is actually going bump in the night. One evening, in a story relayed to Sanchez by former Milias owner Bob Platt, a team of ghost hunters came in and were setting up equipment for a long night holed up in the restaurant.
At about 11:30 p.m. on the night the investigation was to take place, Platt and his staff were about to serve a hearty meal of steak to the ghost hunters, but by the time they emerged from the kitchen with the food, the crew of investigators were already packing up their equipment. All they said was “something is just not right here, so we’re leaving.”
That team of ghost hunters never returned, according to Sanchez.
The two restaurateurs have come to terms with the interesting guests that seem perfectly content to stay put. Sanchez and Zyburra have even gotten in the habit of throwing out a friendly acknowledgment to any possible invisible guests that might be lingering around.
“Ever since all of this started, I have made it a practice to say ‘good morning’ to George Milias,” Zyburra said, referring to the Yugoslavian immigrant, George Milias Sr., who established the restaurant and hotel in 1922. “He started this place and I don’t know if that old cowboy was him but I’d rather start talking first than wait for them to tap me on the shoulder.”
Who is the cowboy in old-fashioned clothes? Well, Zyburra said she believes it could be Milias.
One morning, a little more than a year ago, Zyburra said she walked in and told Milias she “wasn’t going to talk today.”
She remembers she was stressed and preoccupied with faxing a document, but after much difficulty it was starting to go through.
“So I’m faxing it and I’m standing there and I hear this voice in the fax machine – a deep man’s voice – say ‘relax,’” Zyburra said. “And I know I sound like a nutcase, but it was right through the fax machine.”
Famous for being the Garlic Capital’s social hot spot in its heyday, the Milias hotel has seen its share of interesting characters pass through it’s doors over the decades. The venue boasted a “fine restaurant” and was a “favored place for travelers on Highway 101,” according to the City of Gilroy’s Historic Resources Inventory.
The edifice is a testament to Gilroy’s rodeo roots and golden yesteryears when the likes of Clark Gable, John Wayne, Bing Crosby, Bob Hope, Tennessee Ernie Ford, Will Rogers and American comedy duo Abbott and Costello sipped drinks at the 57-foot horseshoe bar. Other notable visitors include Former U.S. Presidents John F. Kennedy and Dwight D. Eisenhower.
Reviving the Milias’ vibrant and illustrious history through restorations and renovations is something Zyburra and Sanchez have been toiling away at since February 2011.
“This was the last stop for food, gas or anything,” Zyburra said. “They’d come into the hotel because it was so beautiful. A lot of people would end up staying here because they’d have a few too many cocktails; plus, it took a long time to get here.”
“(The spirits) are happy with what we’re doing,” Sanchez added. “We’re bringing back the history.”
Zyburra is convinced the spirits are just trying to be helpful.
“Sometimes when you get a tap on the back, I think it’s one of the old bartenders,” she surmised. “I’m not frightened to be in here and nobody should be. I have told my husband though, if for some reason I have a heart attack and die in this restaurant, you revive me at least until we get to the street so I don’t join the crew that’s here. Don’t let me be locked here forever, please.”
The Milias Restaurant is located at 7397 Monterey Street in downtown Gilroy.
If the chef committed suicide by jumping off the roof it would have been in the newspapers. If not and no body’s remember it. It didn’t happen!